Three time the lady

Did you ever swear that you wouldn't help out an annoying, whiny pseudo friend who calls you at all hours of the night going on and and on about her loser boyfriend, and complains about her problems in minute detail to no end? Did you ever hang up the phone, sighing and say "never again!" only to call her back one week later and say, "hey what's going on? Is everything okay?" *

I have no idea how I got roped into it, but we're doing a third IUI. It was as if Dr. Stonehenge had a whiteboard behind his desk and was presenting me the situation in a red sharpie, circling the crucial points. "In scenario one Miss Chris, you take a much needed break and call me back in a month or so for IUI number three. That's not a problem for me. You probably need a break. You seem tired and that's normal." I looked at him and my heart felt squeezed and I had that little shortness of breath thing that makes me feel like I'm smothering. The "lost time" feeling. The "I'm going to be thirty-eight years old in one month" feeling. He was already on scenario two, "we can try to contact Dr. Dieu and SEE if he'll allow you to move on to IVF but he is my superior and if he suggests IUI I think he has a reason behind it and I think we should respect that." In other words "I'm chicken shit intimidated by this guy and you're stuck in the middle dear patient. The final scenario was underscored, clearly his favorite "Let's try one more IUI and see what results we get." My eyes were fixed to the wall behind him where there is a picture of Dr. Stonehenge and a woman, his wife I presume, on vacation in what looks like Florida or Tahiti, and the sun is setting behind them, and their faces are bathed in in that surreal, tropical orange glow that you only see in holiday snapshots. "Umm, yes okay" I sighed, "I guess I'll do number three and get it over with."

I have decided that I will be the unwilling participant in this cycle. I will drink coffee, I will drink wine, I will eat sugar and all manner of nasty things and take my temperature when I feel like it and I will swear loudly and wrassle pigs in mud if the mood strikes me. And I will shoot poison eye darts at anyone who dares to tell me that "pregnant women" shouldn't drink or eat this or that, I swear I will. I will do whatever I want to and this cycle will pass before my next birthday. My body will do the cycle while I stand on the sidelines and watch it all happen. I will not even think about the treatment. I will do my injections, uh, I mean her injections at whatever hour it happens to be before she goes to bed. And so there will be my promised break. A mental break from the person who is enthusiastic!! about!! getting!! pregnant!!, to someone standing on the sidelines staring at a game being played out and rooting for neither team.

*This scenario doesn't actually represent any of my annoying whiny friends, (who I love dearly by the way, whiny or not). It's just an extreme example of course and probably more representative of myself than anyone I know.